"Sir Jonathan Ive has been crowned British Visionary Innovator in a competition, run by the Intellectual Property Office. Ive won by a large margin with almost fifty per cent of the vote (46.6%). In second place was Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world wide web) with 18.8 per cent of the vote. James Goodfellow OBE (the inventor of PIN technology and the cash machine) was in third place with 15.2 per cent of the vote." Alan Turing was also nominated. If you ever needed an illustration of everything that's wrong with the technology industry today, it's this. Guy who designs the exterior of mass-market gadgets wins over guys who actually really contributed to technology. Telling.

Id much better have well designed, well thought out products, which are easy to use and can be picked up by millions, than techy gadgets which are based around great ideas, but poorly executed, in usability, in look and feel, in build quality. That just competely counteracts with the prime goals of said device in the first place, which is being a tool to enable humans to do something beyond their initial capabilities.

Consider computers. Before the iMac came along, your average desktop PC was a mumbo jumbo of cables. all components were modularized, which meant you had cables for video, printer, mouse, keyboard, speakers, scanner, network ... looking at the back of a PC, its a mumbo jumbo of cables, a dust collecter and a laymans nightmare to set it up. Most people needed an IT guy to get their computer working.

Before you go "but that already existed before" let me stop you right there : the iMac was the machine that brought this quality of computing to the proper attention of the masses, and changed the experience for millions in this respect in a positive way; maybe for you, as a technology enthousiast, this is trivial; for millions of computer users, however, its things like this which make a profound impact on overall user experience.